In
1690 the English of the Company of the Eastern India establish a base in Calcutta.

In 1858 the English Crown
took the direct control of India.

The Empire of the Great Mogol,
begun in 1526 with Baber, great-grandson of Tamberlain, had arrived at the end.

Locality: India

Age: From 1690 to
1858

The English arrive in India

On 5 june 1659,
Aurangzeb, of the family of Mogol, was crowned emperor; he took the name of
Alamgir, that is "owner of the world". He would die on 20 February 1707. Under
his reign Europeans, in particular English and French ones, began the penetration
in India.

In 1690 the
English settled down in Calcutta, in Bengal. In 1700 over 1200 English lived
there. At the beginning of 1700 Fort William was constructed.

The English begin to take
part in the Indian matters

In 1749 the
French, as a result of European vicissitudes, had to yield Madras to the English
.

In 1750 the
English became part in a vicissitude of local succession and in 1752 the Indians
named nawab of Arcot Muhammad Ali.

Indians
attack Fort William

In april 1756
Ali Vardi, the nawab of Bengal, died. Siraj, the successor, in summer
1756 attacked Fort William as the English had added fortifications without his
permission. Roger Drake, the responsible for the Company, and the greatest part
of the men of the garrison escaped on the ships. 160 soldiers, many women and
children remained ashore. On 20 june the attack was delivered . At noon general
Holwell had to surrender. In the night, 146 prisoners, comprised a woman and
wounded people, were thrown in the prison of Fort William, a cell without air
of 4 per 5.5 meters. In the morning only 23 of them were alive.

The reaction of the English

In January
1757 Fort William was reconquered by the English.

The Company
formed an alliance with the Hindu bankers of Calcutta and particularly with
Jagat Seth, the Rothschild of the place, who, displeased of the new nawab,
supported Mir Ja'far, considered more malleable than Siraj.

On 23 june
1757 there was the battle of Plassey, between Calcutta and Murshidabad. With
only 800 European soldiers and 2,000 sepoy, the army of the Company, guided
by Clive, put the 50,000 men of Siraj to rout. Mir Ja'far became nawab of
Bengal.

The Company controls Bengal

Clive obtained
as a reward a personal patrimony of 234,000 pounds, was named mansabdar
of 6,000 men with one annual wage of 30,000 pounds, equivalent to the revenue
of 24 pargan (regions) of Bengal.

In 1760 the
Company replaced Mir Ja'far with Mir Kasim. As a reward the Company obtained
that approximately half million of silver pounds were transferred every year
from Bengal to the British ships.

The Company controls Bengal, the Bihar and the Orissa

In 1763 the
Company replaced Mir Kasim, who wanted to control the merchants, with the weaker
Mir Ja'far, who was in office until his death in 1765.

Mir Kasim ordered
that all the English resident at Patna were killed, then he escaped to Luckow
and asked help to Shuja-to-Dulah, nawab of the Audh, and to his royal
host, the Mogol emperor Shah 'Alam.

On 22 October
1764 at Buxar (Bakshar), between Banaras and Patna, the major Munro with exiguous
troops beat the army of the mogol coalition.

With an edict
of 12 August 1765 Shah 'Alam had to allow to the Company the collection of the
Bengal, Bihar and Orissa taxes, as the Company had become divan of the
emperor for those territories. In exchange for this the Company paid to the
emperor 260,000 pounds a year for the maintenance of the court of Allahabad.
The administration of the territories remained formally in the hands of the
nawab, who however had no more funds with which to manage expenses.

At the end
of 1769 the monsoonal rains did not fall, in 1770 Bengal found itself lacking
completely alimentary supplies and at least a third of the population died of
starvation. The English merchants made incredible transactions speculating on
the hunger of poor people.

The Company
determined later on to halve the wage of the nawab and not to pay the
annual tribute to the mogol emperor. On the other hand the Company introduced
more effective systems of collecting taxes.

Military
activities

In 1774 the
Company sent English soldiers to help the nawab-wazir of Audh, Shuja-to-Daulah,
in his fight against the Rohilla afghans.

In 1775 according
to the Treaty of Surat, the English promised to the unthroned peshwa
Raghunathrao 2,500 armed men, of which 700 Europeans, in change of gold and
riches necessary in order to maintain them and of the perpetual cession of a
certain number of islands near Bombay.

In 1780 the
Company sent an army in order to help Madras and fought against Haidar 'Ali
who had attacked Fort St. George.

Discrimination of the Indians

In 1790 the
Company established that:

- no sepoy
would never become official

- no civil
employee with wage superior to 500 pounds would have been Indian.

Fiscal reform

In 1793 the
Company reached an agreement with the zamindar that is the mogol tax-collectors
of Bengal, for having a certain minimal yield: 3,750,000 pounds a year. The
zamindar from concessionaires of the emperor, without right to sell lands
assigned to them, were transformed in land owners.

But as soon
as the zamindar, for some harvest gone badly or some other economic
difficulty, were not in a position to pay the established tax, bankers and usurers
of Calcutta hastened in order to take control of the lands. In this way the
old mogol aristocracy was in part replaced by Hindu families: the Roy, the Sen,
the Tagore. These families remained tied to the British regimen and in 1857-58
they manifested their fidelity to the new master.

Conquest of the Malabar

In 1792
the Company made war to the sultan Tipu who yielded large part of the coast
of the Malabar.

Legislatives measures

The Company
abolished the courts presided by Indian judges and at their place put courts
presided by English people.

The magistrates
had also police functions for certain types of crime. But in 1817 justice had
again a separate body.

The district
civil employees had to be English.

The assistants
and the executive staff could be Indian.

It was established
the monopoly on salt, which became one of the main sources of income of the
Company.

A monopoly
was established also for the opium, sent to China in exchange for silk and tea.

The Company
reserved the right to impose taxes and prices.

Expansion

In 1798 the
general governor lord Richard Colley arrived to India, with his younger brother
Arthur, the future duke of Wellington, winner of Napoleone.

On 4 May 1799
the sultan Tipu fell before the English army when his capital Seringapatam was
attacked. Half of the Mysore and Madras were taken by the Company and were joined
to the western coast. Other territories were given to Indian allied.

A short time
later the nizam of Hyderabad yielded the Berar, the nawab-wazir of
the Audh had to dismiss his army beyond yielding the Doab and the Rohilkhand.
Surat and Tanjore were absorbed.

On 31 December
1802, with the treaty of Bassein, the peshwa Baji Rao II, after his defeat,
became allied of the Company.

In 1812 Baji
Rao II began to make resistance, then he was put on a ship and sent to Bithur,
a castle in proximity of Kanhpur (Cawnpore).

The lands of
hostile noble (sardar) were seized. But many jargirdar succeeded
to maintain their lands declaring fidelity to the English.

Changes

Between 1813
and 1833 the English opened the doors of India to the imports from the motherland.
The cotton fabrics machine-made in England supplanted completely the local production.
Millions of women
and men remained without job.

Also in the
agricultural world the industrial revolution carried serious changes. The situation
of the peasants became precarious. India was no more self-sufficient and had
to import from foreign countries also foodstuffs.

Modifications
to the canalization system quadruplicated swampy areas and the fields, up to
then fertile, became sterile due to drought.

In 1832 Persian
stopped to be the official language of the legislation and of the courts. English
became the language of the administration.

In 1835 the
effigy of the English monarch appeared over the rupees.

Between 1828
and 1833 17 palaces of Agra were taken apart and sent to England for being put
to the auction. The English arrived even to place scaffoldings around the Taj
Mahal.

Conquest of the Sind

In 1843 Napier
started a military campaign against the amir of the Sind. On 17 February
1843 5,000 men of the Sind were massacred. The English lost 256 soldiers.

Conquest of the Punjab

In 1844 Ranjit
Singh, maharaja of the reign of the sikh of the Punjab, died. The succession
was suffered and in December 1845 the army of the Company attacked. On 9 March
1846 it was signed a treaty with which all the lands comprised between the rivers
Beas and Satlej, beyond the Kashmir, were delivered to the English. In 1849
hostility resumed and on 30 March the entire Punjab was put under British administration.

Principle of extinction

After 1849
the Company proceeded to integration of still independent territories resorting
to the spurious legal principle of the extinction: the expression "heirs and
successors" in all deals had to be considered reported only to natural heirs,
not to the adopted ones. In 1854 the state of Nagpur with 4 million inhabitants
was in this way annexed by the English.

Cartridges of cow and pig

In 1857 the
use of animal fat in the cartridges provoked the rage in Hindu soldiers, who
thought tath cartridges had been made with the meat of cow, and in the muslim
soldiers, who thought it was of pig. In fact the tip of the cartridges had to
be torn with the teeth and no soldier wanted to violate the alimentary prohibition
of their own religion.

The great revolt

On Saturdays
9 May 1857 the rebellion at Meerut was set off, just for the problem of cartridges.
On Sunday the rebellious troops headed towards Delhi. On 11 May the city fell
in the hands of the rebellious ones and Bahadur Shah II, however reluctant,
was reintegrated in the imperial Glory of Great Mogol.

The English
present at Delhi were killed. On 16 May prince Mirza decapitated English women
and children. A horrid ride was organized in the evening with the heads of the
victims on nozzles.

On 19 May the
imam declared solemnly the Saint war against the infidels. The Hndu protested.
The imam specified that for infidel it was meant "English". In order to calm
the Hindu it was also forbidden the use of beef meat to every people, comprised
the Muslims.

The rebellion
exploded in other zones. At
the beginning of june general Wheleer did not succeed to defend 400 persons,
comprised women and children, in the intrenched field of Cawpore. He surrendered
after 18 days with the agreement of a safe-conduct. But, as soon as people had
gone on the boats, the Indian troops began to shoot. Only 4 were saved.

On 6 september
the English besieged Delhi. The evening of 14 it happened the assault and began
the slaughter, that lasted until 20. Approximately 120,000 Indians were killed,
of which at least 100,000 civilians.

Three sons
of the Great Mogol introduced themselves at the doors of Delhi in order to pray
captain Hodson to interrupt the slaughter. The captain extracted the gun and
killed them.

On the evening
of 18 December by torches ligth captain Hodson proceeded to the arrest of the
Great Mogol. Bahadur Shah II was exiled in Birmania.

The rebellion
continued until 8 July 1858.

On 2 August
1858 the British government approved the Government of India Act with which
all the rights enjoyed by the Company were transferred to the Crown.

Between 1857
and 1858 the English had made more dead men than Tamberlain and of all the emperors
of Delhi put together.